Simple Truths
by Hisa-Ai
Summary: Magnus deserved to know how much he was loved. "I was just thinking about how you're kind of it for me. Like I was born with one purpose: to love you. Everything else I've done in my life has been a way to kill time until I could find you, until I could love you. You're all that matters; my heart beats for you, for nothing and no one else."


_Simple Truths_

* * *

*.*.*.*.*

Alec didn't think he would ever actually fall in love—not real love, not a reciprocated sort of love that he could get lost in. And there _had_ to be a difference, he had always thought, between a pining sort of love and a real sort of love that both parties could get lost in. And he would never know that kind of love. He would never fall in love with a woman, and he would never be allowed to be himself long enough to fall in true love with a man.

No, Alec Lightwood wasn't made for love. He was a soldier, made for bows and arrows that hit targets tried and true, a testament of all the time spent in the training room and out on missions. He was made for order and rules, for following his head and not his heart, for thinking strategically, for putting what was better for the many ahead of the few.

He was made for blood and rust, for order and chaos, for ink and pen, for long nights poured over paperwork, and coffee as bitter as his attitude towards those deemed not worth his time. He was made for dull colors and a wardrobe that said Institute, rather than Alec. He was made for his parabatai, for his family. He was made for defending their lives and their honors with everything that he had in him and then some. He was made to give his very last breath to defending the mundane world from the horrors that would befall it at the hands of his own world.

Alec Lightwood was made to run the New York City Institute and from what he had gathered, it was better to rule it with a head not clouded by things such as love anyway.

It was better to not fall in love with someone who would love him back. He was sure it wouldn't end well.

Except that it did.

Alec Lightwood was not made to fall in love, was not made to be loved, but Magnus Bane didn't seem to be one to follow rules that didn't concern him. And Alec had spent his entire life building his life around the Institute, and every single little one of his personal rules reflected that. But Magnus? Magnus didn't give a _single_ damn fuck in the world about what was best for the Institute or the Clave, he was going to love Alec with everything that he could and then some, so it seemed.

He intrigued Alec, drew him in all at once, yet over the course of days and weeks and months until the next thing Alec knew… his entire life was wrapped up in Magnus, until Magnus was all he knew, all he wanted, all he was.

 _(The Clave, who? The Institute, what?)_

And then Alec loved him. He didn't know what it was at first, didn't know how long the feeling had been building up inside of him or how long it had been what it was, but he recognized it for what its name was when he was more concerned with where Magnus was during That Mission. _That_ had been when his heart had burst open with the feeling that had been slowly and steadily building up inside of it for so long now. _That_ had been when he had realized that what he felt for Magnus during those moments was something similar to what he felt for Jace and Izzy and Max and his parents…

Just. _More_ , somehow.

He knew if anything had happened to Magnus during those moments that he would never recover—not really. His spirit would have been broken and his life would have been without meaning.

Nephilim loved once. They loved with their whole being, passionate and burning as the sun, endless as the skies above and the sea below, and when the one they loved died… they felt it in their heart, their soul. When a shadowhunter's parabatai died, they were never the same after, but they could live on all the same. But when their one love died…

They too usually passed in grief.

Alec had heard the stories countless times in his life, knew the risks of falling in love, in _real_ love, but he had never thought for a moment that it would ever feel like _that_. When he thought Magnus was dead… he felt his world slip out from under him, felt his breath leave him in the worst sort of way, heart beating too fast and feeling like it was going to stop beating any moment at the same time.

It was too much, and when he found Magnus, when he realized his warlock was alive and okay…

It had filled him with such a relief unlike any he'd ever felt before in his life. If he hadn't already been sure that Maguns was his one… he certainly was now.

And he knew that Magnus knew he loved him, some months later, knew the warlock _knew_ because he told him every chance he got, proved it to him every moment that he could, but… it was different, Alec thought. It was different because it was final. It was…

It _was_.

And Magnus had had others, had known love more times than Alec could even begin to fathom, and they would have been fools to not love Magnus in return, so he wondered to himself sometimes if Magnus knew just _how much_ he meant to the Shadowhunter. And it was so, so, _so_ important to Alec that Magnus knew how much he was loved, how much he meant to him, how much he would continue to mean to him for the rest of his life and then some.

Magnus deserved to know how much he was loved.

*.*.*.*.*

"Penny for your thoughts?" Magnus asked, startling Alec out of his thoughts as he came to sit down on the couch next to the Shadowhunter.

Alec's eyes flicked up from the book he wasn't actually reading and he closed it without bothering to mark his page; he sat it down on the arm of the couch and let Magnus intertwine their fingers thoughtlessly, leaning in to steal a kiss of greeting.

"Just…" Alec began with a shrug, free hand coming up so his thumb could rub against Magnus' bottom lip in a way that made the warlock shiver under his touch. "Thinking about you."

"Oh?" Magnus said, lips and eyebrows quirking up in surprise, as though it was _so_ hard to believe that Alec was thinking about him—as though he could ever think of anything else. "Care to share?"

Alec hummed in thought, scooted closer on the couch towards Magnus. He'd been thinking about this for weeks now, though it felt like a lifetime, had been turning the words over and over and _over_ in his mind, trying to decide how to bring it up, how to word it, how to make Magnus _see_ the magnitude of things.

"I…" Alec dropped his hand with a smile. "It's complicated."

"I think you'll find I'm _quite_ fluent in Complicated," Magnus said, squeezing Alec's hand in reassurance, face a perfect picture of patience that made Alec's heart swell.

" _Welllllll_ ," Alec drew the word out, ducked his head before he looked back up at Magnus through his lashes. "I was just thinking about how you're kind of it for me," he said, watching carefully as Magnus blinked at him, scrunched his eyebrows together in thought; the wheels were turning in his head, Alec could already tell. "I just… you're the only relationship I've ever had, and you're the only one I'll _ever_ have. I love you with my _entire_ being, and you're the only one I'll ever love like this. It's like," Alec adjusted himself on the couch until he was facing Magnus completely. "Like I was born with one purpose: to love you. Everything else I've done in my life has been a way to kill time until I could find you, until I could love you. You're all that matters; my heart beats for you, for nothing and no one else, and I know you're all that's going to matter for the rest of time; with my last breath, Magnus, I'll think of nothing to say except that I love you. Does that… make sense?" he finished, wondering if Magnus was grasping fully just what it was that he was trying to say with his words just then.

They fell into a silence just then, during which Alec grew increasingly worried that he had said something wrong, that perhaps he had come on too strong and Magnus was going to pull back, was going to change the subject, disregard all of what Alec had just said. And why wouldn't he? To Alec, Magnus was his life, but to Magnus… Alec was nothing but a small moment, a blink. They were in love now, but Magnus had felt love before, would feel it again.

And wasn't that just the way of things? Alec would willingly give his very being to Magnus, but Magnus would never be allowed to give himself completely to Alec, not really, not in the same way, not in the all consuming way that Alec felt it. Alec was going to die with Magnus' name on his lips, on his mind, on his heart, and that was all there was to it. And maybe that was too much for Magnus to deal with. Alec certainly wouldn't blame him for being overwhelmed when faced with that reality, because Alec himself certainly was some days.

Other days, however… well, it just felt _right_.

Finally, after the longest silence of Alec's life, Magnus smiled once again, shook his head in that lovestruck, disbelieving way of his that Alec was always so endeared by.

"You loving me will _never_ make sense, Alexander," Magnus breathed then, eyes sparking in a way that made Alec's heart clench. "I've done absolutely nothing to deserve you, to deserve a love like this, and here you are anyway, loving me like I'm the only thing that's ever mattered. I love you so much, but I don't think I could ever match how much you love me. That's my only regret, I think, as a Downworlder, that I'm not as gifted as the Nephilim when it comes to loving so… deeply, and passionately, and surely, and… stubbornly," his lips quirked again, and Alec, suddenly overcome, leaned into Magnus and kissed him with everything he thought he had in him and then some.

And when they pulled back, Alec felt his own eyes were glassy and wet, a perfect reflection, he was sure, of what Magnus' eyes looked like just then.

"You silly Nephilim," the warlock murmured then. "That was the furthest from _complicated_ anything could ever be," he teased.

Alec snorted despite himself, "I'd like to see _you_ try finding a better word for it."

"Honest?" Magnus offered easily, quickly, like there was no other suggestion or answer _to_ offer.

And oh, how Alec's entire being simply melted at that suggestion; he was sure he was going to start sobbing any moment now, just from how completely overwhelming this entire exchange was. He had never been quite so aware of the intensity of the love between them as he was in that moment, and it really did threaten to consume his entire being and then some, as if it hadn't already done as much.

"It's alright," Magnus soothed when a tear slipped from the corner of Alec's eye, and he reached a hand up to cup the side of Alec's face, to wipe the tear away.

"I love you so, so much," Alec said then, his words a prayer that he had to close his eyes against for a quick moment, lest more tears slip away from him.

"And I, you," he replied, thumb still stroking soothingly at Alec's skin. "I know it's…" he shook his head, a stray tear falling from his own eyes as well. "... _different_ , I know my love could never compare to one of your own—"

"Stop it," Alec interrupted stubbornly, "Your love, Magnus, is all I've ever dreamed of having. There isn't a single person on this earth who could ever love me more than you do. You might not be a Nephilim, but your love is made of the same stuff ours is; no Shadowhunter could ever love me in the same way that you do, nor would I want them to. You're the only one I want," he assured him.

Magnus took in a breath then, shook his head. "I don't deserve you," he repeated for what could have been the millionth time.

"It's me who doesn't deserve you," Alec corrected.

"Look at us, we're such a _mess."_

"At least we're a mess together," Alec said, teasing and not at the same time somehow. Truly, there was no one else he would rather be like this with, no one he would let see him so vulnerable and himself, no one but Magnus.

It was always no one but Magnus.

"You have to stop saying things like that; one of these days I'm actually going to die from it," Magnus teased, though the glossy look of his eyes, the way his fingers soothed themselves up into Alec's hairline was telling a different, soothing sort of story, and Alec would be damned the day he stopped reminding Magnus of simple truths such as that. He deserved to hear it all and then some on a daily basis. Or as often as Alec had the chance to remind him, anyway.

"Never,"Alec replied simply before he was closing the distance between them to kiss Magnus once again; and they fell apart into each other then, reinforcing with touches and kisses and gasps what they'd both been saying with their words for what felt like a lifetime now, though they had truly only just begun.

*.*.*.*.*


End file.
